Augers of a type having a straight shaft rotated about an axis and having a helical flighting thereon are commonly used to move powdery, granular or pelletized material, for example on the farm to move grain, such as corn or wheat and animal feeds which essentially are made of ground up grain with or without additives and which are sometimes pelletized. There are of course many industrial uses for augers such as to move materials from one place to another.
Because it is not always possible to move materials in a straight line, it is often necessary to connect more than one auger together by the use of U-joints to change directions, for example to go from a lower level to an upper level. There are many problems, however, associated with the use of U-joints in augers. For example, it is not possible to connect an auger flighting onto U-joints because they have parts which pivot with respect to each other and because the U-joints themselves are rather bulky. This creates a situation which requires that the material from one straight section of auger connected to another straight section of auger at an angle requires pushing the material through and past a bulky universal joint. This, of course, slows down the process of moving material, reduces the capacity of the auger as compared to straight auger sections and consequently is less efficient and uses more power. In essence, a U-joint creates a bottleneck in the augering process.
Additionally, while the U-joint is being driven on one end, the opposite or driven end of the U-joint is running at various speeds or velocities depending on the angle at which the U-joint is operated. For instance, for the first 90.degree. of rotation the joint is accelerating and from 90.degree. to 180.degree. it is decelerating. The joint will continue to accelerate and decelerate every 90.degree. thereafter. The amount of acceleration and deceleration is dependent upon the angle at which the U-joint is operated. This acceleration and deceleration causes many failures between the U-joint and the shaft the U-joint is driving.
Another problem is that the bearings of U-joints tend to wear out fairly frequently because of the stress thereon. Furthermore, these bearings may need to be lubricated frequently to enhance the life thereof and these lubricants tend to get into the material being conveyed, which in some cases is intolerable and, in almost all cases, is undesirable.
Furthermore, the angle of change between two straight augers is severely limited by universal joints of a conventional design. Quite often it is necessary to use two or more universal joints to achieve a desired angle of change and for each universal joint needed, the aforementioned problems are multiplied and exacerbated.
Consequently, there is a need for a universal joint for augers which will overcome the aforementioned problems.